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Thursday, October 14, 2010

Hey, I Talk Like That!

...only I'm not the Chancellor of the DC School System!!

I've mentioned many times that I like to workout on my elliptical machine while watching the morning shows before going to work. I should probably re-phrase that, as I can hardly call it a "workout" since I go approximately 2 mph as I listen to the shows and barely break a sweat. Honestly.

But, getting back to my main point, this morning I flipped the channel and caught the tail end of Matt Lauer's interview with the exiting DC Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee. And what a trip that was.

He mentioned the quote she made in a 2008 interview with Time Magazine:

“The thing that kills me about education is that it’s so touchy-feely” .... People say, ‘Well, you know, test scores don’t take into account creativity and the love of learning,’ ... I’m like, ‘You know what? I don’t give a crap. Don’t get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don’t know how to read, I don’t care how creative you are. You’re not doing your job."

I am guilty of tossing "I don't give a crap" around for all sorts of multitudes of situations, especially when MB suggests I should care about something ;-) But beyond that, one of the reasons I did not explore alternative schools when VC was younger was that I felt he needed to focus on getting down the basics: math and reading. His creative side did not suffer and he is now more creative (and intelligent - yeah, I said it ;-) ) than most kids I know.

Has anyone seen Waiting for Superman? I'm intrigued to check it out, especially now that we are going the Charter School route and loving it!!!!

P.S. A dear blogging friend (whose name I shall protect) pointed out to me that the blogger I wrote about yesterday had public stats on her blog - which I checked out (nosey me) and her uniques for Tues were 7 and for Wed were 7. As in 7 people visiting per day . 'nuff said. And no, I'm not one to overly focus on the numbers, but if you make an outrageous statement, you'd better be able to back it up!!